/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package org.apache.flink.runtime.state;

import java.io.Serializable;

/**
 * Stateful streaming operators use a StateHandleProvider to create new
 * {@link StateHandle}s to store each checkpoint in a persistent storage layer.
 */
public interface StateHandleProvider<T> extends Serializable {

	/**
	 * Creates a new {@link StateHandle} instance that will be used to store the
	 * state checkpoint. This method is called for each state checkpoint saved.
	 * 
	 * @param state
	 *            State to be stored in the handle.
	 * 
	 */
	public StateHandle<T> createStateHandle(T state);

}
